


Won't you be my (number) neighbor?

by msmorland



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-09-25 20:36:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20377741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msmorland/pseuds/msmorland
Summary: “I just want to know,” Arthur says, gesturing with the phone he’s been holding out since Ariadne entered his office, “why this person keeps texting me about being my ‘number neighbor.’”Ariadne finally takes the phone from his hand and reads through the text thread, her eyes going wider as she mutters “pet” and “darling” and “kitten”. Arthur knows how she feels.





	Won't you be my (number) neighbor?

**Author's Note:**

> I am not going to manage to finish any bingo fics in time for the deadline this year (unless this counts for the documentation/epistolary square), but when I heard about the whole "number neighbor" thing, this popped into my head. I've missed hanging out in Arthur's head, and it was fun to come back.

“Yes, it’s a thing, Arthur,” Ariadne says, standing in front of his desk with a hand on her hip. “How do you exist in the world while being so ignorant of everything everyone around you is talking about?”

“I manage,” Arthur says, pushing back in his chair. His high-end suit speaks for itself. Arthur does just fine. “Probably because I don’t spend every second glued to the internet.”

“Every second? How about zero seconds? You don’t understand 85 percent of the things I talk to you about.”

Arthur shrugs.

“But now,” Ariadne continues. “You want my help.”

“I just want to know,” Arthur says, gesturing with the phone he’s been holding out since Ariadne entered his office, “why this person keeps texting me about being my ‘number neighbor.’”

Ariadne finally takes the phone from his hand and reads through the text thread, her eyes going wider as she mutters “pet” and “darling” and “kitten”. Arthur knows how she feels. “And you’ve never written back to this guy?”

“We don’t seem to have much in common,” Arthur says. Ariadne laughs.

“Sometimes that can be a good thing, Arthur,” she says. He sticks his tongue out at her superior tone, and she leaves his office still laughing. 

Arthur, though he will never, ever, tell her this, keeps thinking about her words all afternoon.

* * *

Arthur’s phone beeps with what is possibly his fifteenth text from his number neighbor that night, just as Arthur’s sitting down to dinner. He lives, and usually eats, alone, playing music or a podcast to keep him company as he cooks and eats and cleans up. Arthur likes the solitude, likes the feeling of his post-work hours stretching out ahead of him to do with as he likes.

But he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t started to enjoy the texts from his number neighbor, too. He likes these brief indications that someone else is out there thinking of him. Even if that someone has no idea who he actually is.

This time, when Arthur picks up the phone, his texter hasn’t asked a question, the way he usually does. He’s just written _hope u have a lovely evening, pet_. That’s it.

Arthur isn’t sure why that’s the text that gets him, finally, to write back—except that maybe he’s afraid the lack of a question means his neighbor is finally giving up. He—and Arthur doesn’t know it’s a he, just has a feeling it is—no longer even imagines that Arthur will write back.

Arthur can’t have that.

He stares at his phone, thinking, his fork forgotten on his plate. Finally he types, _The same to you, Mr…?_

A minute. The phone beeps again. Is it Arthur’s imagination that this time, the beep sounds a little bit...surprised?

_eames_, says the return text. 

Huh. It’s a more distinguished name than Arthur would have expected from the disorganized text stream he’s received over the last few days. He’d gotten more of a stocky, Hawaiian-shirt-wearing, looks-sleazy-in-a-suit vibe. Not someone with whom he had much in common, as he’d said to Ariadne.

But, as he hadn’t said to Ariadne, pretty much exactly his type. And this is a problem Arthur has, he knows—it’s why he wraps himself so carefully in his suits day after day, why he chooses these quiet evenings in with only his own company. He has a tendency, he knows, to let his imagination run away with him, unless he keeps it very tightly under control. He’ll see a man across the club and let a whole relationship, a whole life together, unfurl in his head before they’ve even spoken a word to each other. It’s gotten him into trouble before, brought him more than one painful disappointment.

He’d felt his mental picture of his number neighbor—Eames—starting to fill in the same way. This time, though, it feels safer—Arthur’s never going to meet this person when all they share is a similar phone number. So why not let himself respond? Why not, for once, flirt a little?

_Nice to meet you, Mr. Eames_, he types. _I’m Arthur_.

Beep. _nice to meet u, arthur. u do know the world will still turn if you let an informality slip in there, don’t u?_

_Will it, really?_ Arthur types. _Thanks ever so much for letting me know, Mr. Eames._

_wanker_, Eames writes back, and Arthur laughs. 

Their texts fly back and forth. Arthur’s dinner goes cold in front of him.

* * *

Beep. _morning, pet._

Beep. _Perhaps it’s not morning where I am, Mr. Eames._

Beep. _don’t be so literal, darling. u know what i mean._

Beep. _Hardly ever, Mr. Eames._

* * *

Arthur doesn’t realize anything about his demeanor has changed until Ariadne points it out. 

No, that’s a lie. Arthur doesn’t acknowledge anything about his demeanor has changed until Ariadne points it out.

“What’s gotten into you?” she says, a few days after Arthur’s first text exchange with Eames, when she catches Arthur grinning into his paperwork late in the afternoon. “Something funny in those reports?”

Arthur pulls an offended face. “Ariadne, are you suggesting I don’t normally have a sunny disposition?” 

Ariadne laughs, as Arthur had hoped she would, and doesn’t say anything more about it. But he doesn’t miss the way her eyes narrow before she leaves his office, her head tilted at him speculatively. She definitely still thinks something is going on.

And, Arthur would have to admit if pressed, she isn’t wrong. He’s been up late the last few nights texting with Eames, and he feels wild questions bubbling up that he’s been tempted, more than once, to put into those texts: _Where do you live? What would you do if, instead of texting, I called?_ Arthur wants to know what Eames’s voice sounds like. Whether they’re in the same time zone; whether Eames would sound drowsy when Arthur is, how it might feel to hear him rather than read him before Arthur goes to sleep each night.

He knows what Eames eats for dinner (_whatever I can grab before I get into the studio, kitten_), his favorite time to work on his art (_when everyone else is asleep_), whether he’s seeing anyone (_what do u think, Arthur?_). Or at least, Arthur hopes he knows what that last one means.

This is Arthur’s danger zone, this place where he knows just enough to like Eames and not enough to second-guess himself. And, for all the care Arthur has taken to keep himself out of that zone, he’s missed it. Missed the rush of getting to know someone new, of thinking _maybe this time. Maybe this one could go somewhere._

And then, one day, Eames sends the text: _how about a pic, love?_

* * *

Arthur doesn’t respond right away. He isn’t sure he should respond at all. But every time he picks up his phone—and texting with Eames has gotten him into the habit of picking up his phone a lot—he sees it there. _how about a pic, love?_

There are ways to fake pictures, of course. But Arthur doesn’t think Eames would do that. 

He finally spills the whole thing to Ariadne over lunch. How he’d texted Eames back and then kept texting him and texting him until this, now. Exchanging pictures feels big in a way Arthur can’t quite articulate, feels that much closer to actually knowing Eames.

Arthur isn’t sure he wants that.

No, that’s a lie. Arthur knows he wants that. He wants it almost too much.

Ariadne, after laughing at him for a good five minutes, tells Arthur he should just send Eames a picture. “Arthur,” she says, in her usual straightforward way, “what’s the worst that could happen?”

The worst thing, Arthur thinks but doesn’t say, is that he could be wrong about this. Eames could be something other than Arthur thinks he is. Whatever this thing is between them could fizzle out.

Arthur knows what Ariadne would say to that: It could fizzle out anyway. And Arthur would have to admit she’s right. If he and Eames aren’t going to be anything, they won’t be anything, pictures or no pictures.

That night, Arthur takes a selfie in his suit in front of his mirror, almost rolling his eyes at the absurdity of the entire endeavor. If nothing else, Arthur thinks, this will have been an adventure. And it’s a good photo, he would have to admit: He’s standing in the doorway of his closet, a sleek line of ties framed by dark wood behind him. Arthur looks at the photo and recognizes himself.

More than 24 hours after Eames’s text—the longest they’ve gone without texting since Arthur first responded—he sends the photo. Maybe Eames won’t text back, Arthur tells himself. Maybe it’s already over.

He’ll check back later, Arthur decides. He’ll try not to think about it or even look at his phone for a while.

Before he can walk away, the phone beeps.

_darling_, Eames’s text says. _you’re perfect._

Then there’s another beep. Eames has sent his own photo.

Arthur doesn’t want to look. No, that’s a lie. Arthur very much wants to look. And so, allowing himself one deep breath to prepare, he looks.

And laughs out loud. Eames is almost exactly as Arthur had pictured: big, with slicked-back hair, his garish shirt quite possibly causing permanent injury to Arthur’s eyeballs. He looks fantastic.

_That shirt is a travesty, Eames._

_knew you’d think so, pet._ Beep. Arthur knows exactly what this next text will say: _i could always take it off._

Arthur laughs again. He thinks about the jokes he could make, the ways he could banter back. He thinks about exactly how he got here, to the point of exchanging these texts with Eames. He takes a deep breath. Then he types his true question. 

_This is real, isn’t it?_

Beep. _darling._

Beep. _it absolutely is._


End file.
